Arrived in Cambodia after a series of stops on the boat to pass through immigration-another visa sticker to add to the collection. It was the nicest, most peaceful, straightforward border crossing yet. Once we docked, we had the usual circus crowd waiting for us offering us rides into town, even though we were already in the centre.

We headed to the place we wanted to stay, but it turned out to be full (seems to be a regular occurence). So we walked for a fair bit before settling on a room for the night. We decided to abandon the usual backpacker area and headed to the centre as it was nearer the sights. This turned out to be a good move as we later discovered the backpacker area was a bit of a shanty town.

Cambodia we instantly liked. the people were really friendly and they spoke good English. There was the usual 'Sir, tuk-tuk, Sir?' but no hassles and all done in good humour.

Out on the hunt for a Lonely Planet-yes, we complain about them but they are very useful-and found a copied version (I don't think we could have found a real one) for $2 at the market that looked like a huge yellow cream custard pie. We found a place to relax by the river for a drink and ended up staying for the rest of the night-mainly because the beer was 50 cents a pint!

We went for breakfast (& moved rooms) the next day and we wanted to hire a tuk-tuk driver for the day to see the sights. With so many tuk-tuks around, it's hard to tell who would be good and give us a fair price. Whilst having breakfast, I had a good feeling about one outside. He was very smiley and wasn't hassling anyone. So Chris went to speak with him and we booked him for $10. Mr Denna first took us to the National Museum, which is housed in a beautiful wat-type buliding. It was good coming out of a toursit place with a tuk-tuk already waiting for us.

After a detour to a book shop, we headed to the Tuol Sleng Musuem, also known as the S-21 prison during the Khmer Rouge. We decided to pay for a guide because neither of us knew much about the Khmer Rouge before coming here and there was also a lot to learn about the prison and the killing fields. Our guide was a woman in her 40s, who was only a young girl during those horrible years. She talked of how she was split up from her family and taken into the country to work all day, all week, having to sleep outside on the dirt. It was so sad to hear her story. She actually considered herself lucky as she was able to remember her familys name so she could reunite with them after. She told us that some of the children were so young, they didn't know who they were or how old they were. The prison, formally a school, is now a museum and is kept as it was found, with cells, chains, shackles, along with the steel beds where prisoners were tourted and killed on. There was also the hundreds of photos of the prisoners-men, women and children. This was part of the Khnmer Rouge's meticulous documentation. It was hard to take in and wasn't a plesant experience, but an important one in order to understand what Cambodia has gone through in it's recent history.

We then headed to the lake to watch the sunset with our driver. He told us a little about his life and his family. He was a very friendly, kind man who we liked alot. We asked him to be our driver for the next day to take us to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. Here, the remains of 8985 men, women and children were exhumed from the many mass graves and there is now a memorial tower displaying the human skulls. I am reading a book called 'Frist they Killed my Father', who was a survivor of the Khmer Rouge-a very harrowing read.